The feature called Maskelyne is one of many newly discovered young volcanic deposits
on the Moon. Called irregular mare patches, these areas are thought to be remnants of
small basaltic eruptions that occurred much later than the commonly accepted end of
lunar volcanism, 1 to 1.5 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has provided researchers strong evidence the moon’s volcanic activity slowed gradually instead of stopping abruptly a billion years ago. Scores of distinctive rock deposits observed by LRO are estimated to be less than 100 million years old. This time period corresponds to Earth’s Cretaceous period, the heyday of dinosaurs. Some areas may be less than 50 million years old.
“This finding is the kind of science that is literally going to make geologists rewrite the textbooks about the moon,” said John Keller, LRO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The deposits are scattered across the moon’s dark volcanic plains and are characterized by a mixture of smooth, rounded, shallow mounds next to patches of rough, blocky terrain. Because of this combination of textures, the researchers refer to these unusual areas as "irregular mare patches."
The features are too small to be seen from Earth, averaging less than a third of a mile (500 meters) across in their largest dimension. One of the largest, a well-studied area called Ina, was imaged from lunar orbit by Apollo 15 astronauts.
Ina appeared to be a one-of-a-kind feature until researchers from Arizona State University in Tempe and Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in Germany spotted many similar regions in high-resolution images taken by the two Narrow Angle Cameras that are part of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC. The team identified a total of 70 irregular mare patches on the near side of the moon. ...
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
I'm a little confused by the picture. Maskelyne is a 24 km diameter crater in Mare Tranquillitatis, with a number of identified satellite craters, but none as small as the largest one in the pic, AFAIK. Is the pic just of an area in the vicinity of the crater Maskelyne?
(I assume there is no suggestion whatsoever that volcanism on the Moon might have been the origin of the ~10 km bolide thought to have created the Chicxulub crater on Earth. I'll stop thinking about that right now.)
Back in 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts orbiting the Moon photographed something very odd. Researchers called it "Ina," and it looked like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption.
There's nothing odd about volcanoes on the Moon, per se. Much of the Moon's ancient surface is covered with hardened lava. The main features of the "Man in the Moon," in fact, are old basaltic flows deposited billions of years ago when the Moon was wracked by violent eruptions. The strange thing about Ina was its age.
Planetary scientists have long thought that lunar volcanism came to an end about a billion years ago, and little has changed since. Yet Ina looked remarkably fresh. For more than 30 years Ina remained a mystery, a "one-off oddity" that no one could explain.
Turns out, the mystery is bigger than anyone imagined. Using NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a team of researchers led by Sarah Braden of Arizona State University has found 70 landscapes similar to Ina. They call them "Irregular Mare Patches" or IMPs for short. ...
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
DOUBLEYOU OH DOUBLEYOU
That must be proof positive of lunar aliens. Looks just like one of those elongated skulls from South America
(I have a theory about that conspiracy)
The feature called Maskelyne is one of many newly discovered young volcanic deposits
